Many of the people suffering from blindness and different eye defects could be helped and cured if they had access to proper diagnosis and then treatment. By harnessing mobile phone apps, hardware and rigorous scientific testing, a group have created an easy to use, affordable and portable system for testing eyes anywhere in the world – from surgeries to patients’ homes.
A team of ophthalmologists, developers and engineers have created a mobile app, Peek (portable eye examination kit), and clip-on hardware that transforms a low-cost Android smartphone into an eye examination and diagnostic suite, capable of running a range of tests, including visualisation of the back of the eye. It is easy to use, affordable and portable.
Peek can diagnose blindness, visual impairment, cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and other retinal and optic nerve diseases and crucial indicators of brain tumour and haemorrhage. The system stores contact information and GPS data for each patient. Google-map integration allows a novel way to follow-up and treat patients. More broadly, such technology allows co-ordination of services, to target mass treatment campaigns to the regions of greatest need.
The number of people that are eye impaired is increasing and there are research to support this:
- 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired and 39 million of these people are blind.
- 90% of blind people live in low-income countries.
- 80% of blindness is avoidable.
- In the areas of greatest need, patients do not have access to diagnostics or treatment.
- In developing countries, more people have access to mobile phones than running water.
This is the problem that the team is working to solve.
I was myself diagnosed of an eye defect a few months back. I have been living with this eye defect for a while. I have never prior to a few months back visited an optician. It is common where I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, that people take issues of their sight lightly. They only visit a doctor when there is serious damage to their sight.
Some will only go to the roadside folks that sell optical frames and lenses to profer a solution to their eye defects. These roadside optical frame and lens peddlers are not properly trained.
The cost of visiting a professional is high. It cost me N4,000 ($25) to get my first pair of lens while health insurance from the office took care of the eye test. A visit to an optical center revealed that it will cost me N10,000 ($62) to book an appointment for a test with the optometrist and another N15,000 ($93) to N45,000 ($279). While there are cheaper frames that costs from N1,000 ($7) up in the open markets, the eye test and the prescription lens should come from the professional optometrists.
Enter Peek
A proper eye test can be done using the Peek Vision solution in the remote villages and to poorer families. It will cost about $500 (N80,875) to set up a mobile testing unit as opposed to about $25,000 (N4,043,750) for a full fledge medical unit.
Initially when Andrew and his team set up to solve this issue on their visit to Kenya, they had to procure very expensive equipment and had to rely on petrol powered electrical generator. Where he was in Kenya, he observed that while many people do not have access to proper drinking water, they still have smartphones. So, it was easy to tow that route and develop for smartphone.
He went around with a team of 15 people and those expensive equipment. But now, all that is needed is a single person on a bicycle and a smartphone. And it costs just $500. The issue of power is solved by using solar powered rucksack that keeps the phone charged and backed up.
Instead of waiting for the patient to come to them like they did initially and they sometimes never came, they can go to them whereever they are now using the single health worker and provide comprehensive hightech accurate test is possible with Peek’s solution. This test can be delivered by anyone with minimal training.
Experts can be linked with people in remote areas that are difficult to reach, effectively putting those experts in the homes of these people living in these remote areas. The result is that the experts can make diagnosis and plans for treatments. Project managers and hospital directors can search the Peek interface by different parameters to see all the tests that have been carried out and uploaded. Once they are searched, text messages can be used to reach the patient that they are going to be visited with a treatment.
People go blind while it could have been prevented. But now, Andrew says, they might just be a text message away from help.
I reached out to Peek Vision and they got back to me telling me that the solution is still in development phase; when it is fully developed, they hope that the solution can also be deployed to richer societies and bring down the cost of providing diagnosis and treatment of eye defects. This is indeed a noble project that can reduce the number of blind people we have in remote areas and poorer communities that lack access to proper eye care.
“The people who need eye care the most are the ones that least have access to it.” – Andrew Bastawrous.
